Life in Northern Towns VI

Today I purchased, for two bucks, a big bag of "play sand" at Home Depot. It'll be put to use in a sandbox for Julia, but that noble purpose didn't allay my sense that it's wrong to buy sand. Back in the day, my dad would get sand for our sandbox by simply driving to the gravel pit and throwing a few shovelfuls in the back of the truck. If he paid for it, he probably used muskrat pelts or something similarly rustic. I'm pretty sure my sandbox was the best one ever. The high point of my life in the sandbox was burying my toy Landspeeder, with Luke Skywalker in the driver's seat, in the sand one fall, then digging it up in the spring, dirty but intact. Tatooine had nothing on the U.P.! (Neither did Hoth.)